


iridescence on skin

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Character Death, Past Abuse, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22375999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: In a world where (almost) everyone has a tattoo on their right wrist with one set of coordinates that point to the place where their soulmate is born, Alex thought he wouldn't be any different. He couldn't be more mistaken.He has two.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 37
Kudos: 188





	iridescence on skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [manesalex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/manesalex/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Molly! I wish you a wonderful day, and I hope you get to spend it with your loved ones.
> 
> When I ventured into this new fandom, way back in the first half of 2019, I didn't think I'd find such amazing people, and I for sure wasn't expecting to meet _you_ , but I am so grateful that I did. I'm really really glad that I got to write for you for the Cosmic Love Exchange, because that marked the beginning of this friendship that I cherish. You're one of the best people I've ever met, in and outside of fandom, and you deserve only the best things in the world.
> 
> I'm pretty sure you remember answering an ask on Tumblr, right, Molly? One about tropes? And prompts? Uh, well, surprise! You gave me such amazing things to work with, but I could only write one of the ideas, so here I present you with a **soulmates canon-compliant (of sorts)** long fic!
> 
> This is my humble attempt at giving back to you a little of what you've given to all of us. I hope you enjoy it!

**seven**

Alex is playing in the backyard, one car in his right hand and one ambulance in his left hand, when he feels the searing pain in his right wrist, underneath the leather band his father forces him to wear everywhere — even when he’s at home, these days.

He yelps, dropping the toys to the ground and placing his left fingers on top of the band. He doesn’t dare to lift it — doesn’t want to bear his father’s anger upon himself — but the feeling is too strong, burning his skin and making him shiver from the pain.

“Mom!” he calls out, trembling as he feels as though a needle’s being pierced through his skin. “Mom!” he repeats, frantic, scrambling up to his feet and faltering as he runs inside the house, his cars and playground completely forgotten. 

He finds her in the kitchen, her long black hair tied in a neat bun and her hands busy kneading through some dough. Alex would let his mouth water at the mere thought of a homemade cake, but his wrist hurts too much. He stops at the threshold, not daring to step inside for fear he might be reprimanded — although his father is nowhere to be seen — and he calls for her, once again, softer, words laced with tears, “Mom.”

She turns around and notices him for the first time. She takes in his tears and his trembling, and immediately drops the dough she’s shaping to rush toward him. “Alex, dear, what’s wrong?” she asks, tender and worried. “Have you fallen down? Have you scraped your knee?”

He shakes his head, and stretches out his arm, presenting her with the leather band just under her eyes. “Hurts,” he hiccups in between sobs. He knows he should be braver, because he’s now a big boy; during his birthday party last week, his older brothers told him that he’s not a baby anymore, so he isn’t allowed to cry. His father agreed with them, but his mother wasn’t around at the time, so Alex doesn’t really know if she will tell him off for shedding tears over something as silly as a prickling feeling in his wrist.

“Lemme see,” his mother whispers, soothing words smoothing over his skin as she disentangles the knots in the leather band and it falls to the floor. He doesn’t want to look at it, but his eyes move on their own accord and he glances down.

There are numbers and lines seared on his skin, just underneath the coordinates he was born with. 

“Mom, what’s that?” he asks through gritted teeth as a new set of numbers show up on his skin. “It hurts.”

“It looks like a new set of coordinates,” his mother muses, gently tapping his skin below the black lines. “This is unheard of.” She kneels beside him, never letting go of his arm, and picks the leather band from the ground with ease.

Alex sniffs, his left hand rubbing the tears off his eyes as his mother prods at the coordinates on his wrist. At school, he’s been taught that everyone’s born with a set of coordinates engraved on the skin of their right wrist — their soulmate’s exact birthplace. He didn’t know his was different until Flint had tried to locate the place of all the Manes brothers' soulmates, and they hadn’t been able to find a spot on a map where his coordinates existed. Innocent as they were, back then, Alex and his brothers had gone to their father for answers and help; his father had frowned at them while he checked the coordinates, and he’d muttered under his breath for a while before looking up at Alex and saying, in that serious voice of his that always made Alex want to crawl under a rock, “Alexander, you _won’t_ show this to anyone, _ever_.”

His father had made him feel like those coordinates where something to be ashamed of. And Alex had only wanted to be on his father’s good side, so he hadn’t complained when his father had placed a leather band that itched on his too sensitive skin. Alex hadn’t understood, but he hadn’t asked.

He just wanted to be like his brothers, brave and big and good. He just wanted to be _normal_. But maybe he isn’t meant to be normal. Alex sighs as the pain recedes when the black lines and numbers show up completely.

No one ever got two sets of coordinates. 

“Listen carefully, dear,” his mother tells him in a hushed voice, covering his wrist once again with the band and tightening it around his arm. “You won’t tell anyone about this. Never. Not even your brothers, and especially not your father. Do you hear me?” When he doesn’t react, staring dumbstruck at her, she shakes him slightly. “Alex, do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“What if Dad asks?” he whispers, because he doesn’t want to lie to his father. Lying is one of the worst things you could be punished for, at home.

“He won’t ask,” his mother assures him. “He isn’t here, he doesn’t know about this. You won’t tell him, and I won’t either. We will research about this, just you and me, okay? It will be our little secret.”

“Okay,” he agrees in the end, when he realizes his mother isn’t letting go of him until he says something. “Okay, Mom. It will be our secret.”

“Good boy,” she tells him, ruffling his hair and standing up. “Do you want to help me bake?” she offers, and Alex jumps, excited at the promise of delicious dessert making, his new set of coordinates all forgotten underneath the layer of leather. 

Later that week, Alex is sitting on his bed, fiddling with the guitar that his mom has given to him as a birthday gift, when he hears the voices — his father’s, loud and menacing; his mother’s, soft and pleading. He looks up from the strings when the voices give way to thumps and someone stomps outside a bedroom, the door slammed shut in their wake. Alex frowns but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t resume his playing, either. 

He just waits until the door to his bedroom opens almost shyly and his mother walks in, dressed in a flowery blouse and jeans sporting big painting stains. “Alex,” she calls his name, shaking her head. “You should be in bed already.”

“I couldn’t sleep, Mom,” he tells her truthfully. “Thought music would help.”

“Oh, it helps, doesn’t it?” she smiles at him. Alex can tell something’s wrong from the way her mouth drops a little, from the inflection of the words that should be reassuring but are simply devoid of cheerfulness. “Now, up into bed with you,” she commands, taking the guitar from his lap and gently laying it on the floor next to the bunk. “Do you want me to read you something?”

“Can you sing me a lullaby, Mom?” he asks, too afraid of speaking above a whisper. His father thinks that lullabies are for babies, but his mother doesn’t. She understands him. She’s always understood him. His mother smiles and nods, and if her smile falters and her eyes look a little more watery, Alex doesn’t really register those facts.

He only closes his eyes and listens to his mother’s voice, soothing and even. He just allows himself to fall into sleep with his mother’s fingers slipping underneath his leather band and caressing the skin. He just stumbles into slumber with his mother’s lips softly pressed on his forehead.

When Alex wakes up in the morning, all he has left of her is a guitar and the gust of air in between her butterfly kisses.

**eleven**

Sixth grade starts off as a nightmare for Alex. He sleeps through his alarm, set for six-thirty, and by the time he manages to get out of his all too short shower, he’s missed breakfast — _we observe some rules and timetables in this house, Alexander_ , his father reminds him as he throws into the dustbin the last of the bacon and the eggs — and he’s running out of the house with his backpack dangling perilously off his left shoulder as he tries to hop into the school bus.

He doesn’t want to walk to school on his own, but he knows that’s what’ll happen if he misses the bus, because his father won’t give him a ride to school, not after having lazed off in bed so spectacularly that he’s already an hour behind his schedule.

He has to get on that bus. 

He runs as fast as he can — his house stands behind a roundabout at the end of a long dead-end street and the school bus stop is right at the other end, by the intersection with the main road that crosses his neighborhood and leads straight into downtown Roswell. _Get on that bus_ , he tells himself as he runs, carefully avoiding losing his backpack that swings on his back. He can see the bus tail lights, the red marking the brakes still on and the door still open, and he sets off wildly. He has to reach it. He _has_ to. 

He’s almost there when then the engine huffs and without warning takes off the road. He’s left on the curb, agape and blinking into the void. Alex wants to cry so much that he balls his fists at his sides to keep the tears from falling. He wishes he wasn’t so sensitive that missing his ride to school makes him cry. He wipes at his cheeks before the tears begin falling.

He fails, and he has to walk all the way to Mesa Middle School under a weak drizzle that has him soaked by the time he reaches the school’s doors. Somehow — probably thanks to his fatherʼs tendency to make them be always ready sickeningly ahead of time — he’s got ten minutes to spare, so he rushes to the locker room and throws his backpack on a bench before heading to a sink. He looks at his reflection in the mirror, taking in the disheveled short locks and the slight rosiness in his cheeks as a result of his race. “Great, Manes,” he chides himself in his best impersonation of his father. “Now you’ll be short of breath during first hour.”

“Talking to yourself again, Alex?” comes Kyle’s voice from the door. When Alex turns around, he sees his best friend leaning into the frame, arms crossed against his chest, a smirk ready at the corner of his mouth. 

Before he can retaliate with something witty — or with _something_ , really — there’s a ruckus outside. Some of the older students are chanting _fight, fight, fight_ , others are pushing someone around. Kyle turns to the corridor at the same time as Alex approaches the door, and they take in the scene in front of them. Alex feels bile rising in his throat.

There are a bunch of new people in the corridor, surrounding two kids who are in the middle of a circle formed with students of different grades who are watching as a fight unfolds. Alex doesn’t think he knows any of them — not the ones fighting, not the ones looking — but he doesn’t like the situation, and he feels a pang of something he can’t describe when Kyle joins in the crowd and cheers for one of the kids in the middle.

Alex takes a brief look at them, realizing suddenly that he _does_ know one of the boys fighting in the inner circle. He recognizes Wyatt Long, with his snarl and his crooked nose, but the other boy — all honey curls and bravado as he throws punches into thin air — is a complete stranger. Alex takes in the stranger’s holed sweater and his stained jeans, and he has a flashback of his mother wearing painting-stained sweatpants around the house. He feels an instant ache in his heart, and he has to look away.

“Go beat him, Long!” Kyle cheers on Wyatt, startling Alex out of his memories. 

“Kyle!” he exclaims, scandalized. But Kyle only spares him a sideways glance before focusing on the fight before their eyes. 

Not for the first time, Alex wonders when his best friend started to become this blood-thirsty preteenager, when not even four months before the very same Kyle whoʼs now pressing for more violence had actually convinced Alex to free the fish theyʼd caught during one of their fishing trips while staying out at the Valentisʼ hunting cabin. He tries to turn around and walk away from the crowd, when the noise increases and all of a sudden several things happen at the same time. 

The students yell louder and louder, pushing at each other to get closer to the fight. Alex gets caught in the midst of the crowd, stumbling and faltering as he scrambles to get away. 

Someone screams that the principal is approaching them, and chaos ensues. The students who have been cheering on begin to flee, disorganized, almost panicked to earn themselves a punishment for instigating a fight in the school halls. Someone runs away and into Alex, knocking him to the ground. He tries to get up, but everyone's trying to escape the wrath of the principal, whoʼs now barking out names and announcing heʼs taking mental notes about whoʼs been involved. As Alex attempts to get on his feet, a few more students pile on him. The principal reaches them and then there’s no escape. 

Alex pushes off several students — Isobel Evans, Wyatt Long, the curly haired new boy, some other faceless people he isn’t sure he’ll recognize ever again — as his arm begins to flare in pain. He tries to get on his feet again, but he keeps slipping underneath Isobel Evans, because the girl is way taller and seemingly stronger than him, and she keeps pushing him back into the ground in order to get herself up. In the end, the principal stands in front of the heap they’ve all formed, tapping the tip of his shoes on the floor and waiting for them to gather themselves. 

They end up having to stay after class, punished for being witnesses while Wyatt Long smooths away unscraped. Alex has always known Wyatt’s father had connections everywhere, and he seems really interested in his son’s life, and Alex can’t help but feel jealous of petty Wyatt — he wishes for his own father to care about something different from training.

He takes advantage of the situation — he’s sitting by the end of the classroom while Mr. Edwards reads his newspaper at his desk near the blackboard up front. Nobody is paying him any attention, so he slips a finger underneath his leather band with as much care as he can muster, trying not to touch the two sets of coordinates that have been aflame ever since the beginning of the fight earlier that morning. He dips his head underneath the table in order to hide whatever he might find — after all, he’s more and more aware as the years go by that his coordinates are by far the strangest anyone has ever seen — and dares a glimpse at his right wrist, dreading and hoping.

The two sets of coordinates are alight. They’re shining, the lines and the numbers and the weird symbols dancing on his skin in flames of colorful detail. He shivers at the sight — skin laced with ink, numbers entwined with colors, and it’s then that it hits him.

Coordinates are supposed to come alive whenever you meet your soulmate for the first time. They’re a beacon, a map to finding love. _This means_ , Alex thinks, staring closely at his two sets, _this means I’ve finally meet him_. 

He pauses, and even in his mind he _knows_. He’s never dared to wish, even though he knew he most likely had a soulmate, or two. He’s always thought the two sets of coordinates meant that he got to experience true love twice in his life, but this is the first time he’s allowed himself to give voice — if only in his head — to his true feelings.

He knows who he wants his soulmate to be. Alex has the inkling that his father won’t like it — just as much as he dislikes Alex himself for being different enough to have two separate coordinates — and him wanting to spend his life with another _boy_ will be food for future wars. But right now, his heart is soaring.

He’s already met his soulmate, whoever it is. He can’t wait to properly introduce himself to all the new kids in his class, take the chance to peek at their wrists and find the exact location of his own birthplace. He’s so excited planning ahead of time how to find his intended that he misses out on two different details surrounding this new discovery.

The first one is that the new curly haired boy hasn’t stopped staring at him all the time he’s been checking on his coordinates, a weird gaze clouding those whiskey-colored eyes Alex has noticed.

The second one is that, although everyone’s coordinates are highlighted in red, Alex’s are glimmering in an iridescent rainbow. 

**seventeen**

They’d never spend another evening smoking joints on the rooftop of the café, the four of them. Alex can’t wrap his head around the fact that, the very same night his whole life crumbled down in shambles, Rosa’s existence was being obliterated from this world.

“Maybe obliterated is too strong,” he muses to himself, all alone with his back against the Crashdown sign. “I don’t think Hank and Wyatt will ever let us forget who killed Kate and Jasmine.”

“You may be right,” he hears at his back. He doesn’t turn around, not even when the metallic door creaks closed and he can distinctly hear a sigh at his left. Maria flops down by his side. “They will never forget, and therefore, Roswell will never rest in peace.”

“You talk about this town as though it was dead,” Alex mutters, plucking at his leather bracelet. He’s taken to wearing it once again, after a few months of teenage rebellion that had led him to understand that he wasn’t, in fact, as different as he thought. “It’s only three teenagers, after all,” he adds, his heart breaking even as he speaks — he doesn’t want to reduce his lifetime-long friendship with Rosa to something temporary, feeble, worth dismissing. Yet he continues, “tragedies happen everywhere.”

“This town was dead long before Rosa,” Maria tells him. She produces a small plastic bag from her purse and opens the zip loudly. Before Alex can ask her about it, Maria already has cigarette paper in between her fingers and she’s rolling up a joint. Just like the old times, when there were waves of laughter and jokes on the rooftop, when Alex found out both Liz and Maria had identical twin sets of coordinates on their wrists — almost like clones of his own — when Rosa used to teach them chord progressions on her beaten up guitar.

Just the old times, when there were four of them.

Now there’s only Alex and Maria left, and Alex knows that before the summer ends there will only be one of them remaining in the middle of nowhere, Roswell, New Mexico.

Maria passes him the joint after taking a long drag, and Alex picks it up with unsurprisingly shaky fingers. “You know, you may be right,” he whispers before lifting the joint up to his lips. “But I won’t be around to attend its funeral.”

“What do you mean?” Maria asks, big eyes widening as she peruses his face for anything that may give away he’s joking. “You leaving too?”

“I’m enlisting,” he confesses in between drags, the joint running back and forth from his fingertips to Maria’s. “Finally manning up to the Manes family heritage.”

There’s a long silence that threatens to trail into the night crawling upon them, only broken by cicadas and the sharp sounds of their breaths.

“You can’t be serious now,” Maria says after a long time. The joint is forgotten in her hand, smoke lifting to the sky. “You promised you’d never enlist.”

“I’ve grown up.” His eyes close as he allows his head to rest against the structure of the sign. “This is what I have to do.”

“You’re one of the most anti-war people I’ve ever known, Alexander Manes,” Maria says indignantly. “I can’t believe you’re going against all your ideas. Why? What about Museum Guy?”

“What about him?” Alex finally explodes. He doesn’t open his eyes, but he can feel Maria tensing up by his side. He’s not used to losing his cool, not when his father isn't around, but now the world has begun spinning counterclockwise, and his whole existence has been tilted up. 

“You said you thought he was your soulmate.”

Those words, softly spoken into the nightly wind, awaken something in Alex’s soul. The remainders of the warmth that the summer had spread before Rosaʼs death arenʼt enough to ignite that spark inside Alex. It’s not that he doesn’t care anymore — itʼs that he does, so much, that he fears he would burst if he even spoke his mind. 

“My soulmate doesn’t exist,” he says looking down at his wrist. He knows Maria can no longer see the coordinates, but that doesn’t mean theyʼre not there, marring his skin. “I thought weʼd established that.” 

“If yours doesn’t exist, then mine either. Nor Lizʼs,” Maria retaliates, flailing her right wrist in front of his face, joint forgotten as she tries to make him look at her skin. “You were so _sure_. When you said Museum Guy was your soulmate. You never said why, though.” 

Alex closes his eyes. He doesn’t feel like sharing the feelings that turmoil inside of him, but at the same time he knows he might explode if he doesn’t speak up. Things were easier when Rosa was around — she’s one of the rare people in the world without a set of coordinates, as though she isn’t meant to know what love feels like, but she understands. She always understands. 

_Was_ , he thinks, wincing. _Was. Wasn’t. Understood._

The pain is almost unbearable. 

Alex canʼt tell Maria that he feels lost without Rosa. That he resents Liz for fleeing instead of fighting. That he’s willingly going to basic training because it means leaving Roswell and the abusive ways of his father — who he wishes isn’t following him all the way to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Even though the Air Force is synonym to abandoning all his dreams and hopes for a future that no longer exists, now that there’s no one to root for him beside Maria, now that everyone’s too lost to help him find himself.

Leaving Roswell means leaving Guerin, and that’s as unbearable a thought as his despaired soul can uphold, but he _has_ to. He needs to hide his broken heart beneath a layer of self-assurance and snark, because otherwise he might crumble and never protect the ones he most desperately needs to protect. In his mind he can hear Rosa’s voice, _you’re a kid, you don’t have to fix everyone, you’re not a superhero_ , but he can’t help feeling like he’s failed Guerin by being exactly what he is — a teenager with shattered dreams and an uncertain future.

Alex can still feel Guerin’s lingering touch on his skin, molten and abrasive, fingers bruising oh so delicately that it burns and soothes at the same time. He can still taste Guerin’s tongue in his mouth; he can still hear Guerin’s shaken voice and his very own moans. He can still _feel_ Guerin inside and out, like he’s imprinted in Alex’s very soul, like they’re one, now and forever. He knows it’s cosmic, even if he’s aware that _forever_ and _cosmic_ and _eternity_ aren’t words available in his pre-military teenage brain. He’s doomed to walk in his father’s footsteps, to follow in his older brothers’ wake. He can’t have a dream. Not now.

First he has to learn to win his own battles.

“Alex,” Maria sighs softly, looking at him with bright eyes. “You know you can talk to me.”

“I know, but I’m fine,” he assures her, although he’s crying on the inside. “Museum Guy was just a dream. Now I have to wake up.”

He snatches the joint from Maria’s fingers and inhales a long drag, pointedly ignoring her glare. If heʼs reveling in his memories of that one shared moment in a guarded tool shed — of caresses and kisses and laughs and so much love to last him an eternity — nobody has to know. Not even Maria. Not even one of the few people who actually know whatʼs going on behind closed doors at the Manes household.

No one gets to share his happiness, because no one can ever begin to understand how it felt when Guerin touched his wrist, fingertips hovering reverently over the coordinates, and Alex’s whole world lit up. Suddenly it was as though he was inside Michael, and Michael was inside of him, all the secrets unfolding, images Alex still doesn’t understand — galaxies and black holes and supernovas — mingling with dusty deserts and music and family. 

He doesn’t care. He doesn’t mind not understanding whatʼs going on because this is what itʼs supposed to feel like — the world ending and starting, a tilt in its axis, and then everything makes sense once again. All the tales heʼs been told about soulmates and everlasting love become real underneath his inexperienced hands as he allows Michael Guerin to reach his very core. 

Maybe Guerin is one of his soulmates, but he canʼt afford to lose him to his fatherʼs bigoted hatred. 

Alex holds his breath, the smoke burning his throat for as long as he can keep it inside. The memories turn into a nightmare as Maria watches him, his hands balling in fists once he gives her the joint back. All he sees in his mind is the pain, the hands squeezing and the hammer falling and falling and falling, and he canʼt breathe.

“Alex,” Maria says again, but he dismisses her with a wave as he makes grabby hands at her. She passes the joint but he doesn’t smoke. “Please, donʼt go. Iʼll talk to my mom, weʼll find a way.” 

“Itʼs going to be fine,” he repeats, more to convince himself than Maria. “I’ll come back sooner than you know it.” 

“Itʼs decided, then. You all are leaving me.” 

Alex doesn’t like the resigned finality in Mariaʼs voice. There’s a tinge of regret in his heart he quickly squashes down along with the lump in his throat before he says, “I’ll be back.” 

“You better,” she points a finger at him. He shakes his head, snorting, and leans into her. “I love you, rockstar.” 

“Love you too, tigerlily.” 

**twenty-three**

Gregsonʼs fiancée dies during an ambush in Baghdad while their squad is on leave in Germany. The news travels fast, these days, but itʼs not through the official channels that they know. 

Itʼs because Gregson drops to his knees in the middle of a bar in Berlin, clutching his right arm as he wails in pain. And Alex knows, he just _knows_ , because he felt the same pain Gregsonʼs going through when he was seventeen and scared and leaving behind everything that had ever made him happy. 

Lopes and Whitney kneel beside Gregson, asking him and trying to understand. Alex knows that neither of them can possibly understand, ever, because their soulmates are healthy and happy and _safe_ stateside. He watches on as Gregson cries out, fully aware that there’s nothing he can do to help. 

“Itʼs Gina,” Gregson manages to spit in between wails. “Somethingʼs wrong.” 

All of them look down at Gregsonʼs wrist, where the coordinates pointing to a small village in the middle of Minnesota slowly but painfully disappear. Alex wants to tell him that everything will be alright, but he knows better. 

The news comes the next morning, and Gregsonʼs dismissed from duty to go back home and bury the love of his life. Alex tries to avoid any human contact for the following hours, slumped against the counter of the hotel bar as he nurses a whiskey on the rocks. Lopes, however, has other plans; he slides into a booth next to Alex and gestures the barman to give him exactly the same that Alex is having. 

“Itʼs not good to drink alone,” he tells Alex, clinking his glass to Alex’s before chugging down a good part of the amber liquid. 

“Itʼs not good to drown yourself in whiskey either,” Alex counteracts. Lopes laughs, his massive dark body trembling as he shakes his head and drops the glass on the bar. 

“Are you going to spill now whatʼs going on with you or am I supposed to torture it out of you?” 

Alex sighs. He doesn’t want to share anything heʼs feeling, but he knows Lopes wonʼt let him be until he gives away some details. Alex thinks it could be worse, Lopes is one of his closest friends in the Air Force and heʼs the only one who knows about Alex’s secret. 

“Itʼs because of Gregson, innit?” Lopes asks, straight to the jugular. Alex takes a sip of his glass and nods. “Itʼs hard, I know. I donʼt know what Iʼd do if Mica died.” 

“I know how it feels,” Alex confesses, fidgeting with the leather band on his wrist. Heʼs kept it on ever since he left Roswell; at first, he said he didn’t like to show his soulmateʼs mark, and when he chose his line of work he pleaded that secrecy about his soulmate was in check — who knows what their enemies could do to draw information out of him, if they just knew who they could threaten. 

“Is that why you keep that atrocity on?” Lopes says, signaling the leather band with a frown. “Because your soulmate passed away too?” 

“Not really.” Alex isn’t sure what is the reason why he finally cracks under Lopesʼ scrutiny, but he sighs and tugs at the knot until the band falls on the counter and his teammate can have a good look at it. 

He ignores the dull ache on his wrist, where the two sets of coordinates are slowly blurring away until there’s only one of them — the very first one marking the only place that no one has ever been able to locate.

“You have two,” Lopes exhales, fingers drawing circles in the air but never touching Alex’s skin. “What does it mean?” 

“I don’t know,” Alex confesses. He lifts the glass to his lips and drinks as Lopes takes his time to understand. “The first oneʼs been there since I was born, the other since I was seven or so.” 

“The second one is fading,” Lopes points out. 

“Iʼm pretty sure thatʼs what happens when your soulmateʼs slowly dying.” He speaks so casually that he almost fools himself into believing. _Almost_. 

He’s been watching the coordinates fade to white for the best part of six years now, from the moment Guerin fled the tool shed with a bloody hand and a crumbled future. Alex believes now that his father must have done much more damage than it looked like, if the coordinates are disappearing. 

It didn’t take him long to understand, at seventeen, that the second set of coordinates pointed to a very specific place in the middle of the desert. 

He canʼt share with Lopes his fatherʼs threats — _I can make him disappear, you know, no one will miss a loser who was found wandering in the desert_ — and although it hadnʼt been veiled, Alex had understood two things. 

Michael Guerin is the person his second set of coordinates point to. And Jesse Manes is not someone you challenge, for you will fail. Every single time. 

Still, Alex needs to unload his soul, unburden the pain thatʼs been eating at him ever since. The uncertainty of not knowing if his fatherʼs making good on his promise to destroy everything Alex has ever loved is too much for him. He hasnʼt been back to Roswell in five years. For all he knows, his father could have made good on his promise. 

That could explain why the second set is fading to the point of being almost translucent now. 

Lopes is looking at him, patience written on his features, and Alex makes a decision. He gulps the rest of his whiskey and prays that heʼs not making the worst mistake of his life. 

Under the thin veil of the German night, he opens up his heart to his best friend in the Air Force — he talks about his mother and the way she explained he was different and wonderful, about his father and his abuse, about his love for a boy who seemed to understand the intricacies of the universe and yet he chose to love Alex of all people, about threats and pain and despair. He talks and talks, for hours, until the barman tells them they have to vacate the place.

Itʼs then that he realizes heʼs bared his soul so much, that heʼs broken several federal and military laws with everything heʼs said. Lopes could have him arrested with just a word. 

Alex doesn’t dare to look up when he grabs his jacket and moves to leave the bar. But then, when he straightens his back and squares his shoulders, Lopes comes to him, surrounding him with his strong arms, and Alex finds himself tugged into a hug so tight he can barely breathe. 

“He wonʼt hurt you again,” Lopes promises. “There’s nothing two airmen like you and I can do against him now, but I promise you, he wonʼt hurt you again.” Alex splutters against Lopesʼ chest, and his friend smiles into the words he says next. “Now, about that boy who, you know, I donʼt know about…”

“Lopes,” Alex whispers, warningly. He hasnʼt been this scared since he saw his father hammering a hand to a workbench. 

“We will find out, about him. We will make sure heʼs fine, and safe. And we will keep your father away from him.” Lopes lets go of him but keeps Alex at an armʼs length. “And then we will research about your first set of coordinates and who they point to.” 

“We?” 

Lopes nods and hugs him again. “You’re not alone, kid. Youʼll never be. And I will make sure of it, for as long as weʼre together.” 

Alex shivers, glancing down from Lopesʼ face to his own wrist, and sighs. Heʼs still not quite sure that he will survive long enough to be safe from his father, but he knows he wonʼt stop fighting. 

And maybe, just maybe, he could someday make Guerin understand that him leaving Roswell was a way to keep them both safe and alive. 

**twenty-eight**

Alex flexes his fingers over the neck of his guitar, the strings feeling sharp under his fingertips, cutting through the thin skin. He shakes his head as he ignores the pain and presses on the frets. There’s a drop of blood on the wood where he’s pushed too hard on the guitar. He doesn’t mind the physical pain; his hurting comes from a deeper, more complicated place that has nothing to do with the wounds heʼs getting from roughly playing guitar. 

The sound of a car fills the silence, and he sighs into the wooden instrument in his hands. He knows who it might be — there’s only one person who knows where he lives and who is stubborn enough to come to him after everything that has happened in the past weeks. He doesn’t look up from the guitar, fully aware that Kyle will ignore his protests and his attempts at diverting attention, so he simply remains silent. One door chimes open and then creaks closed, footsteps dragging on the path to the cabin. 

“Alex,” he hears at his left. He looks up, startled, for it isn’t Kyle whoʼs talking to him. 

In front of him, a few inches into the porch, hands in his pockets and black cowboy hat in place, Michael Guerin stands tall against the clear light of a winter morning. Alex blinks, once, twice, before rising to his feet and leaving the guitar leaned against the wooden chair heʼs been sitting on. 

“What are you doing here, Guerin?” he asks cautiously. He feels like heʼs standing on quicksand, whenever he watches his own reflection in Guerinʼs eyes. “I thought it was clear that we donʼt have anything else to say to each other.” 

Alex looks away, the heat in Guerinʼs gaze too much to bear. He doesn’t want to be here, having a one on one with the only man heʼs ever loved, the very same one who chose his best friend over Alex. He doesn’t want to have this conversation with the only person whoʼs actually not human but whoʼs wanted so much to be loved that he lied for a decade in order to keep his sister safe. He doesn’t want to stand on his own porch and do a reenactment of the conversation they had, days before Caulfield and Noah and Rosa, and hear once again that Guerin has nothing left on Earth. 

That it hurts to love a Manes. That it hurts to love _him_. 

Alex doesn’t want to hear Guerin say that _now_ , after Caulfield and Noah and Rosa, after Max and Jesse and _Maria_ , he still doesn’t have anything left here. 

“You said you didnʼt look away, either,” Guerin says. There’s an ache in his voice that forces Alex to look up, back into honey-colored eyes that threaten to suffocate him. 

When he does, what he sees leaves him speechless. 

There’s a piece of the spaceship — the very same one Alex had left in his truck exactly three days ago. It’s floating next to Guerin, the symbols gleaming under the fading light of the day thatʼs dying behind them. 

“Iʼve found Antar,” Guerin announces, the piece turning by itself. “When were you going to tell me?” 

“Tell you what, Guerin?” Alex lashes out, fists at his sides, knuckles already white. When Guerin produces a sheet from his pocket without touching it, Alex pales. He recognizes his own handwriting, the letter he left alongside the piece when he sneaked close to the Airstream three nights before. 

“That you were the beacon back home,” Guerin says simply, like he isn’t unfolding the secrets of their own universe. 

“I don’t think I understand,” Alex manages to say. Somewhere inside the house, Buffy growls. Alex winces; he should have let her out sooner, but heʼs been so engrossed in himself that heʼs forgotten to take care of his own dog. 

Guerin lifts one hand and the door unlocks, Buffy finally free to jump up and down the porch, scratching her nails across the board. 

“Thanks,” Alex mutters. He sits back down on the chair when Buffy comes barreling toward him. He takes any excuse he can to stop looking into Guerinʼs eyes, for heʼs scared of the fire burning deep in there. Buffy barks and licks him; Alex doesn’t notice the leather band slipping. He could have sworn that it was tight against his skin, but after all he has a professional picker in front of him. 

His coordinates are left in the open, the second set faded to white while the first one still gleams iridescently. 

“You had the way back home all this time, Alex,” Guerin explains. Alex dares to look up and heʼs met with a strength that washes over him in waves. “You have two sets of coordinates.” 

“I thought you were dead!” Alex explodes, all the pent-up anger and despair finally catching up with the immense feeling of loneliness trapped in his soul. “This one,” he points down, “this oneʼs the exact place where your pods are! And it hurts as though youʼre dying but youʼre still alive and I don’t understand, I just donʼt—” 

Guerin cuts him off when he presses a finger on the coordinates, in the space between the two sets, and Alex feels his soul soar. He allows his eyes to fall closed and when he opens them again, heʼs no longer on the porch of his cabin in the outskirts of Roswell. He’s in an open space, red and ochre and orange and yellows, much like the desert where he grew up and the desert where he lost himself. 

“Itʼs common, for humans to have a set of coordinates on their right wrist,” Guerin explains, and his choice of words reminds Alex of the inhuman nature of Michael Guerin. “You have two, and if weʼd had more time, if I hadnʼt been so scared and selfish, we would have known what they meant so many years ago.” 

“What they mean? Where are we, Guerin?” he demands in stutters, his hands shaking. 

“I donʼt have coordinates like you do, but apparently I can summon my soulmate to my mindspace.” 

“Just like Isobel,” Alex frowns. 

“Similar, but not quite the same. See, Isobel can influence people, but itʼs a different mindspace. Here,” Guerin gestures at the vast space surrounding them, “here is somewhere I can only share with you, no influences, no pressures. Just you, me, and whatever it is between us.” 

“But that means—” 

“You know, Alex,” Michael chuckles. “For a hacker, youʼre pretty slow.” 

Alex doesn’t have time to reply. All of a sudden there are images flying next to him, flashes of memories ingrained so deep in his soul that he didn’t know they were still stored in his brain. There’s the first time he saw Guerin, at eleven fighting Wyatt Long, and the first kiss they shared, the moment his coordinates came to life and when one set faded away. But he can also see Guerin stumbling outside of a pod, he can feel the pain and the confusion at being left behind and the hope when Guerin realized Alex loved him _back_ , and then the resolution to never again hope against hope that humanity had something to offer an alien like Guerin. 

Alex understands that the moment his coordinates started fading away wasnʼt Guerin slowly dying — it was his human side that he chose to bury underneath layers of fake self-confidence and macho swagger. And then it dawns on him, at the same time as the images dissolve in thin air and there’s once again only the two of them in a staring match. 

His first set of coordinates doesn’t point at anywhere on Earth, because his soulmate isn’t human. 

“Youʼve found home,” he says stupidly, and then stronger, “youʼre leaving then.” 

“Oh, Alex,” Guerin chuckles again, shakes his head and takes Alex’s hand in his. “You already know I canʼt lie in the mindspace, no matter its nature. You canʼt either.”

“For a genius, you’re not making any sense.” 

“Iʼve found Antar, but I havenʼt found home, Alex,” Guerin explains as though heʼs talking to a kid. “I canʼt find whatʼs never been lost.”

Alex is about to reply, to force Guerin to stop talking in riddles, when he finds himself with a handful of plaid and a mouthful of Guerin, and he stops thinking. 

Everything he feels — everything Guerin feels — is poured in a kiss that has Alex’s knees trembling and his mind racing. He can feel himself and Guerin, as if they are an extension of one another. He can feel the loss and the pain and the anger, but also the hope and the longing and the love, a love so big that it doesn’t fit in their hearts combined. 

A love that consumes him and turns him into a supernova, a love that bursts from inside and lights up his whole world where it was in shadows. A love thatʼs his and only his to cherish. 

When they part, Alex notices theyʼre back on the porch, a faint light shimmering around them. He has Guerinʼs shirt clutched between his fingers, and he allows himself to lean his head into Guerinʼs shoulder. He breathes in the distinct scent he misses when Guerinʼs not around — sweat and alcohol and hair conditioner, a mix so weird and yet so Guerin that Alex wants to cry. 

“Iʼm home, now,” Guerin declares, never letting go of him as Alex drags him inside with a purpose he didn’t know he had. 

“You’re home, now,” Alex repeats, tugging at his sleeve as they stumble into the bedroom and fall onto the bed. 

Both his sets of coordinates are now glowing, iridescence on his skin a reminder of what he once had and once lost, only to have it back now.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'ed by amazing [WhitneyL32](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhitneyL32/pseuds/WhitneyL32), who did a great and fast job with this, and didn't even blink at my weird word choices! Thanks once again!


End file.
